Systems and methods for identifying terms relevant to web pages using social network messages

ABSTRACT

Systems and methods for retrieving social network messages and/or web pages in response to search queries are described. One embodiment of the invention includes generating a word list from at least a portion of the content of the web page using a web and message server system, generating an initial list of relevant terms based upon the word list using the web and message server system, identifying additional relevant terms using messages posted to at least one social network based upon the initial list of relevant terms, and creating an updated list of relevant terms by using the web and server system to combine terms in the initial list of relevant terms with the additional relevant terms identified using messages posted to at least one social network.

RELATED APPLICATION

This application claims priority to provisional application No.61/285,944 filed Dec. 11, 2009, the disclosure of which is incorporatedherein by reference.

BACKGROUND

The invention generally relates to messaging in social networks, andmore particularly relates to matching messages to web pages.

Due to the tremendous amount of information available on the Internet,finding the most appropriate information or content that a searcher islooking for can be quite difficult. Likewise, locating and/orassociating or linking messages from a social network with relevantcontent, e.g., web pages, can prove even more difficult given theinherent limited nature of the messages in both content and actualcharacters in the messages.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Systems and methods for retrieving social network messages and/or webpages in response to search queries in accordance with embodiments ofthe invention are described. One embodiment of the invention includesgenerating a word list from at least a portion of the content of the webpage using a web and message server system, generating an initial listof relevant terms based upon the word list using the web and messageserver system, identifying additional relevant terms using messagesposted to at least one social network based upon the initial list ofrelevant terms, and creating an updated list of relevant terms by usingthe web and server system to combine terms in the initial list ofrelevant terms with the additional relevant terms identified usingmessages posted to at least one social network.

In a further embodiment of the invention generating a word list from atleast a portion of the content of the web page using a web and messageserver system includes extracting desired content from the web page, andgenerating a list of words utilized in the extracted web page content.

In another embodiment of the invention the desired content extractedfrom the web page includes content from the group made up of the title,URL, links, and body of the web page.

In a still further embodiment of the invention, extracting desiredcontent from the web page includes performing document object modelanalysis on the web page.

In still another embodiment of the invention, generating a list of wordsutilized in the extracted web page content includes generating a list ofwords that appear in the extracted web page content, filtering the listof words to eliminate words identified in a predetermined list of stopwords, and filtering the list of words to remove case and tense variantsof words.

In a yet further embodiment of the invention, generating an initial listof relevant terms based upon the word list using the web and messageserver system includes generating combinations of words that appear asneighboring words in the extracted web page content, and combining theword combinations with the list of individual words to generate theinitial list of relevant terms.

In yet another embodiment of the invention, each of the generatedcombinations is limited to a predetermined number of words.

A further embodiment of the invention again also includes scoring eachterm in the initial list of terms with respect to at least the extractedcontent from the web page.

In another embodiment of the invention again, scoring each of the termswith respect to at least the extracted content from the web pageincludes scoring each term based upon at least one characteristicincluding a characteristic from the group made up of the number ofoccurrences of the term in the extracted web page content, the number ofoccurrences of the term in the original web page, the uniqueness of theterm, the position of the term on the web page, and combinationsthereof.

In a further additional embodiment, uniqueness of a term is determinedbased upon the message rate of the term within at least one messagestream.

In another additional embodiment, the uniqueness of a term increasesbelow a predetermined threshold, and the uniqueness of a term decreasesabove the predetermined threshold.

In a still yet further embodiment, identifying additional relevant termsusing messages posted to at least one social network based upon theinitial list of relevant terms includes determining the uniqueness ofall combinations of a predetermined selection of the highest scoringterms from the initial list of relevant terms, and selectingcombinations of the terms based upon the uniqueness of the combination.

In still yet another embodiment, uniqueness of a combination of terms isdetermined based upon the message rate of the combination of termswithin at least one message stream.

In a still further embodiment again, the uniqueness of the combinationof terms increases below a predetermined threshold, and the uniquenessof the combination of terms decreases above the predetermined threshold.

In still another embodiment again, the predetermined selection of thehighest scoring terms from the initial list of relevant terms is apredetermined number of the terms from the initial list with the highestscores.

In a still further additional embodiment, the predetermined selection ofthe highest scoring terms from the initial list of relevant termsincludes all terms from the initial list with scores exceeding apredetermined threshold.

In still another additional embodiment, creating an updated list ofrelevant terms by using the web and server system to combine terms inthe initial list of relevant terms with the additional relevant termsidentified using messages posted to at least one social network scoringeach combination of terms with respect to at least the extracted contentfrom the web page, and adding the combinations of terms to the initiallist of terms.

A yet further embodiment again also includes sorting the combinations ofterms and the terms in the initial list of terms based upon score, andselecting an updated list based upon a predetermined selection of thehighest scoring terms from the sorted list.

In yet another embodiment again, scoring each combination of terms withrespect to at least the extracted content from the web page includesscoring each combination of terms based upon at least one characteristicincluding a characteristic from the group made up of the number ofoccurrences of the term in the extracted web page content, the number ofoccurrences of the term in the original web page, the uniqueness of theterm, the position of the term on the web page, and combinationsthereof.

In a yet further additional embodiment, identifying additional relevantterms using messages posted to at least one social network based uponthe initial list of relevant terms includes retrieving messages byquerying at least one social network using terms from the initial listof terms, and generating an additional list of relevant terms based uponthe retrieved messages.

In yet another additional embodiment, generating an additional list ofrelevant terms based upon the retrieved messages includes generating alist of words that appear in the retrieved messages, filtering the listof words to eliminate words identified in a predetermined list of stopwords, filtering the list of words to remove case and tense variants ofwords, generating combinations of words that appear as neighboring wordsin the retrieved messages, and combining the word combinations with thefiltered list of individual words to generate the additional list ofrelevant terms.

In another further embodiment, creating an updated list of relevantterms by using the web and server system to combine terms in the initiallist of relevant terms with the additional relevant terms identifiedusing messages posted to at least one social network includes scoringthe terms in the additional list of relevant terms based upon messagesretrieved from a social network, and adding the scored terms to theinitial list of relevant terms.

In still another further embodiment, retrieving messages by querying atleast one social network using terms from the initial list of termsfurther includes determining the topic of the web page, and scoring theterms in the additional list of relevant terms using a set of messageshaving relevancy to the topic of the webpage.

In yet another further embodiment, scoring the terms in the additionallist of relevant terms using messages having relevancy to the topic ofthe webpage includes scoring each term in the additional list ofrelevant terms based upon at least one characteristic including acharacteristic from the group made up of the number of occurrences ofthe term in the set of messages having relevancy to the topic of the webpage, the uniqueness of the term, the position of the term in eachmessage, and combinations thereof.

In another further embodiment again, adding the scored terms to theinitial list of relevant terms further includes adding a predeterminedselection of the highest scoring terms from the additional list ofrelevant terms.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a web page and messaging searchand retrieval system in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a web page and messaging search andretrieval process in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 3 is a graphical representation of a score versus message rate inaccordance with an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart illustrating a process for filtering messagesbased upon topic relevancy in accordance with an embodiment of theinvention.

DESCRIPTION

Turning now to the drawings, systems and methods for retrieving socialnetwork messages and/or web pages in response to search queries inaccordance with embodiments of the invention are illustrated. In severalembodiments, search results are improved by matching social networkmessages to web pages in order to obtain additional informationconcerning the relevancy of search terms to specific web pages. Socialnetwork messages are typically short messages that can incorporateunique terminology adapted to the constraints of the messaging medium.In several embodiments, an initial list of relevant terms is generatedbased upon a specific web page. The initial list of relevant terms isthen used to generate an expanded list of relevant terms based uponterms used in social network messages using techniques including but notlimited to static phrase expansion and/or dynamic phrase expansion.

The term static phrase expansion can be used to refer to processes forassigning relevancy scores to phrases constructed using keywordsextracted from a web page by analyzing the message rates of messages ina social network that contain the constructed phrases. The message ratesprovide information concerning the relevancy and uniqueness of theconstructed phrase. The message rates can be used to sort or rank theconstructed phrases and optionally the bottom or low/lowest scoredphrases can be removed or ignored. In addition, phrases that appear witha frequency above a predetermined rate can also be ignored on the basisthat the terms are common and not indicative of relevance with the webpage.

The term dynamic phrase expansion can be used to refer to processes forgenerating an expanded list of relevant search terms by querying one ormore social networks using an initial list of search terms, andidentifying additional relevant terms used in the social networkmessages returned by the social network. It should be appreciated thatthe terms obtained by dynamically analyzing messages retrieved from theone or more social networks will likely include different or “new” terms(i.e. terms not found/used in the web page) since social network messagelimits are typically finite, often summarize thoughts and/or reflect adeliberate or thoughtful choice of words.

In many embodiments, the information parsed from each web page caninclude but is not limited the title, universal resource locator (URL),description tag, keywords tag, and/or main body of the page. Keywordsare extracted from the parsed information. In several embodiments, thekeywords are extracted using keyword extraction techniques based on termfrequency. Although any of a variety of keyword extraction techniquescan be utilized in accordance with embodiments of the invention. Scoresare assigned to and used to rank the extracted keywords by looking forthe existence of the particular keyword in the title, URL, links, andbody of the page. In several embodiments, the initial list of relevantterms is not limited to keywords, and includes phrases. The initial listof relevant terms or a portion of the initial list can then be used as asearch criteria in a social network, and messages can be gathered thatmatch the search criteria and used to perform static and/or dynamicphrase expansion to create an expanded list of relevant search terms.The expanded list of relevant search terms can then be used in theretrieval of web pages and/or social network messages in response tosearch queries. The generation of lists of terms relevant to specificweb pages, expanding the lists of relevant terms based upon socialnetwork messages using processes including but not limited to staticphrase expansion and/or dynamic phrase expansion, and the retrieval ofweb pages and/or social network messages in response to search queriesusing expanded lists of relevant search terms are discussed furtherbelow.

System Architecture

In FIG. 1, a web page and message search and retrieval system is shown.The system includes a web and message server 3 that is coupled with aweb page and message database 5 and is in network communication with aplurality of messaging and web services and information sources 7. Theweb and message server and the web and message database can collectivelybe considered a web and message server system. In many embodiments, aweb and message server system can include more than one server and morethan one database. In addition, the web and message server system caninclude additional servers performing functions including but notlimited to serving web pages enabling users to interact with the web andmessage server system via web based user interfaces. Web and messageservers and web and message databases in accordance with embodiments ofthe invention are discussed further below.

In the illustrated embodiment, the web and message server receives webpages from remote servers and generates a record for each received webpage in the web and message database. In several embodiments, at least aportion of the received web page is associated with the page's recordwithin the web and message database. The web and message server extractsa list of terms from at least a portion of the web page and the list ofterms is associated with the page's record. In many embodiments, eachterm is scored based upon its relevancy to the web page and the scoresare also associated with the keywords in the page's record.

In many embodiments, the web and message server is also configured toreceive user generated messages from a plurality of messaging servicesand information sources including but not limited to the Facebookservice provided by Facebook, Inc., the Twitter service provided byTwitter, Inc., and/or the LinkedIn service provided by LinkedIn, Inc. Inmany embodiments, the received messages are also stored and/orassociated with records in the web and message database. In a number ofembodiments, keywords are selected from the received messages andutilized in the identification of additional terms relevant to web pagesfor which records exist in the database.

As noted above, the web and message server 3 can also receives searchqueries from user devices 8 either indirectly via, for example,messaging services or web servers 7 or directly, for example, through auser interface in communication with the web and message server.Examples of user devices include but are not limited to personalcomputers, mobile phones, and other types of web connected consumerelectronics devices such as tablets, cable boxes, DVD players, andtelevisions. For each received search query, the web and message serveridentifies records within the message and web database that are relevantto the search query. The identified records can relate to social networkmessages and/or web pages and information from the identified recordscan be retrieved from the database 5 by the server 3 and transmittedback to a designated recipient, e.g., the sender of the search query. Inmany embodiments, the information can include but is not limited torelevant social network messages and/or URLs of relevant web pages. Inseveral embodiments, information extracted from the web page indicatedby the URL is also provided in conjunction with each URL to assist auser in evaluating the web page or message that is actually of mostinterest to them. Processes for identifying search terms relevant to webpages and or social network messages and for retrieving web pages and/orsocial network messages in response to a search query in accordance withvarious embodiments of the invention are discussed further below.

Identifying Relevant Search Terms

Referring now to FIG. 2, a process for identifying search terms relevantto a web page in accordance with an embodiment of the invention isshown. When identifying relevant search terms, a given candidate webpage is identified and retrieved (41). In many embodiments, undesiredcontent from the web page is then removed or otherwise ignored. Theundesired content can include but is not limited to navigationalcontent, advertisements, interactive material, and other content that isnot particularly relevant to the intent of the page when viewed by auser. In many embodiments, the title, URL, links, and body of the webpage are desired content that is extracted from the web page for use.One technique for performing such a removal is document object model(DOM) analysis. Although other techniques suitable for removal ofinformation can be utilized in accordance with the requirements of aspecific application.

From the reduced web page or the extracted content from the web page, alist of words from the page is created (42). In generating the wordlist, “stop” words (e.g., common words in a language, such asprepositions) are removed and in one embodiment all case and tensevariants of a word are also removed. For example “skateboard”“skateboarding” “skateboarder” all become three cases of one word,“skateboard”. From the word list, words are combined or stringedtogether to build phrases (43). In several embodiments, phrases arebuilt using words from the word list by grouping all combinations of upto a particular number, “N”, of neighboring words into a phrase.

The generated phrases are then applied to the reduced web page and/or inmany embodiments the original web page resulting in a score for each ofthe phrases (44). In several embodiments, each of the phrases are scoredbased upon the number of occurrences in the document, uniqueness, theposition on the page, if the terms exist in links or the page's title orURL, and other identified criteria. The phrases or the words in each ofthe phrases are then ranked utilizing the scores for each of the phrasesin which the word appears (45). Term uniqueness is described in greaterdetail below. Once an initial list of terms has been generated, theinitial list of terms can be expanded by utilizing the initial list toidentify additional relevant terms in social network messages and/or oneor message streams. Various techniques for expanding an initial list ofrelevant terms including static phrase expansion, and dynamic phraseexpansion in accordance with embodiments of the invention are discussedbelow.

Static Phrase Expansion

In several embodiments, additional or new phrases are generated usingstatic phrase expansion, dynamic phrase expansion or a combinationthereof (46). Static phrase expansion is done by calculating theuniqueness of all combinations of the top scoring N phrases, andremoving combinations that score above a specified uniqueness threshold.For example, in one embodiment, a uniqueness score that is too highmeans that the combination would produce too few messages, if any. Forexample, if the top two terms from the previous described ranking are“skateboard” and “safety”, a new term “skateboard safety” is generatedand calculated for uniqueness. Estimation of term uniqueness isdescribed in greater detail below. A score is then generated for theseexpanded phrases or phrases with the new expanded terms. In manyembodiments, the new phrases are then applied to the reduced web pageand/or in several embodiments the original web page resulting in a scorefor each of the phrases. In a number of embodiments, each of the phrasesare scored based upon the number of occurrences in the document,uniqueness, the position on the page, if the terms exist in links or thepage's title or URL, and other identified criteria. In severalembodiments, by utilizing the original phrase scores and the uniquenessof the expanded phrase, the scores for the expanded phrases aregenerated. The entire list of phrases is sorted by their score and onlya specific number of phrases are kept, e.g., the top M phrases. Whereappropriate, case or tense variants are removed, and additional newphrases are supplied that include these tense or case variants.

Dynamic Phrase Expansion

In several embodiments, in order to also provide content that may be“hot” or especially relevant at a specific moment, dynamic phraseexpansion can be conducted. In many embodiments, the N highest scoringterms for a web page can be used as search queries in a social networkand the search results analyzed to generate a list of new terms usingtechniques similar to those outlined above with respect to theconstruction of an initial list of relevant terms from a web page. In anumber of embodiments, the new terms are then scored using a set ofmessages including but not limited to a stream of messages, and/or apredetermined set of messages satisfying specific criteria. Examples ofappropriate criteria include but are not limited to messages sent duringa set period of time, or messages having a particular topic relevancy.In several embodiments, each of the terms are scored based upon thenumber of occurrences in the message, uniqueness, the position in themessage, if the terms exist in links or other associated content, and/orin accordance with other criteria appropriate to a specific application.These new phrases may optionally be added to the list of relevant termsfor the document, or concatenated with the original set of relevantterms. In several embodiments, only terms exceeding a predeterminedthreshold score and/or a predetermined number of the highest scoringterms are added to the initial list of relevant terms.

In one embodiment, a search for the top M scoring phrases is conductedvia candidate social networks. This search results in some number ofsocial messages that contain the search phrases. Although the messagesmay contain the candidate phrase, they may not be appropriate for thegiven web page. For example, a phrase that is semantically ambiguous mayprovide messages not appropriate for the page. Or the message may besimply “off-topic”, where the message may contain the desired phrase butlittle other information relevant to the page. To remove these messages,the topic of the given web page can be determined, and the topic used tofilter messages that are not related to this topic. Techniques fordetermining the topic of a web page and the topic relevancy of a messageare discussed further below.

Additional constraints can also be applied to the message results whenattempting to identify additional terms relevant to a specific web page.For example, additional criteria could be applied to remove or retainmessages matching the criteria, e.g., messages that link to multimediacontent, or messages from a certain user.

Determined Phrases

Referring back to FIG. 2, once relevant terms, whether phrases orkeywords, are determined for a given web page or pages, the phrases orkeywords are associated with the web page or pages (47). In oneembodiment, the phrases and/or keywords are stored as metadata with theweb page, the portions extracted from the web page and/or are associatedwith the web page's URL. The terms can then be used to assist in theidentification of web pages relevant to a specific search query. In manyembodiments, the scored terms are the sole basis for the determinationof relevancy. In other embodiments, the scored terms can be utilized inconjunction with other characteristics of the web page to score therelevance of the web page to a specific search query.

Estimation of Term Uniqueness

As noted above, term uniqueness can be a factor utilized in scoring therelevancy of terms to a particular piece of content such as a web page,content extracted from a web page, or a message on a social network. Amessage stream is a time ordered set of messages in which the messagesare short and/or limited to a specific number of words or characters,e.g., 140 characters. In one embodiment, given a search term, theaverage number of messages containing the search term (keyword) during afixed period of time is found. The average number of messages versus thefixed time period is the message rate. The lower the message rate themore unique the search term. Utilizing a message rate, unique searchterms can be determined for a given category or topic specificallypertaining to the given category or topic. In several embodiments, theoptimal number of messages for a fixed period of time can be determinedto further refine or enhance the search results. For example, zerosearch results would indicate that the phrase may not really exist, andtoo high a search frequency would indicate that the phrase is toocommon.

A score can be determined via a function similar to the functiondepicted in the chart shown in FIG. 3. According to this function, azero message rate would receive a zero score, and high messages wouldalso receive a low score. However, very low message rates would alsoreceive a poor score. Although a specific function is illustrated inFIG. 3, any of a variety of functions appropriate to specificapplications can be utilized in accordance with embodiments of theinvention including functions in which uniqueness score increases withmessage score up to a threshold message rate, and uniqueness scoredecreases with message score above the threshold message rate.

Web Page Topic Mapping

When using social network messages to identify terms relevant to a webpage, the ability to determine the topic of a web page can be useful inidentifying a set of social network messages relevant to the topic ofthe web page. In several embodiments, the topic of a web page can bedetermined by comparing the web page being analyzed to a listing of webpages broken down by topic or categories. These categories form amulti-level hierarchy, or tree structure. For example, a first-levelcategory may be “Sports”. Within this category, there may be additionalcategories “Basketball”, “Baseball”, and “Football”. Within“Basketball”, there may be the categories “College” and “Professional”.Thus, “Sports→Basketball→College” is a three level deep category. Theselisting may also include web page titles, descriptions or excerpts, andthe category they belong to. Since there may be thousands of nestedcategories, it may be useful to coalesce these categories into asimplified tree that is only N levels in depth. For example, if a treewith a maximum depth of two levels is desired, then all pages about thetopic “Basketball” would be in “Sports→Basketball”, regardless if theyare from the “College” or “Professional” categories.

In several embodiments, the comparison between the web page beinganalyzed and the web page topics can be performed by calculating theTF-IDF (term frequency-inverse document frequency) values for every termin at least a portion of the every web page in each N level deepcategory. An inverted index of all these terms can also be generatedthat maps a term to a topic (an N level deep category) for fastretrieval of the information. The topic relevancy of the web page canthen be performed by comparing the cosine similarity of all the text inthe candidate web page with every indexed topic. The indexed topic thatprovides the highest cosine similarity score can be chosen as the topicof the candidate web page. Although a process for determining websitetopic relevancy using TF-IDF calculations and cosine similaritycomparisons is disclosed above, any of a variety of processes fordetermining web page relevancy appropriate to a specific application canbe utilized in accordance with embodiments of the invention.

Topic Relevance of Social Network Messages

Once the topic of the web page has been determined, the topic can beused to identify social network messages that are relevant to the sameor an equivalent topic. In a number of embodiments, the relevance of asocial network message to a specific topic can be scored by comparingkeywords in the message against a list of keywords relevant to thespecific topic. A process for generating lists of keywords relevant tospecific topics and scoring the relevancy of individual messages to aspecific topic are discussed further below.

Categories and Keywords

Categories of interest or topics can be generated by identifying aspecific subject, such as a person, place or an object. In manyembodiments, categories are refined based on usage performance. Inparticular, categories focused on things perform well with narrowerdescriptions having better performance. For example, a category such as“sports” would not perform as well as “basketball”, which would notperform as well as “UCLA basketball”. These fine grained categorieshowever can come at the cost of increased processing time and storage.In several embodiments, each category is unique having no overlap withother categories.

For each category generated, one or more keywords are identified andassociated with each category. The keywords associated with eachcategory come from messages in the desired medium (e.g., messagingservice). As such, in one embodiment, within each category, there is aspecific table with one or more specific keywords for each medium. Eachmedium can have different message formats and/or terminology used. Forexample, text messages from a mobile phone can and will often look quitedifferent from messages posted to Facebook. Thus, keywords from othersources in one embodiment are only used as a search query/filter withrespect to the desired message format. In this way the keyword tableswould account for slang terms and other such differentiators specific tothe medium. One or more of the following processes can be used toidentify the keywords that are associated with a specific category.Although specific examples are provided below, any of a variety oftechniques can be utilized to build lists of keywords relevant tospecific topics as appropriate to specific applications.

Unambiguous Training

For a given category, e.g., musical artists, there can be ambiguous andunambiguous terminology. For example, an artist name can be ambiguous(“the Beatles”) or unambiguous (“Paul McCartney”). Utilizing unambiguousterminology, every keyword used in a message containing “Paul McCartney”would be stored, and the usage frequencies of the keywords would be usedas a measure of how related to the musical artist category a given querywould be.

User Tagging

A message database in one embodiment would allow for manual tagging ofinformation. These tags are created by users as a means to self-classifymessages. One example is preceding a tag name with a unique character,e.g., a “#” character. For example, if a message contains “#oscars”,then presumably the message is about the Academy Award Ceremony,commonly referred to as “the Oscars”. As such, keywords about the Oscarsawards ceremony can be generated by finding every message with the“#oscars” tag, and store each of the keywords present in the locatedmessages. The resulting table would thus include words commonly used todescribe the ceremony, and thus using the table a message that did nothave a “#oscars” tag could still be located.

Third-Party Information

In one embodiment, a third party database or similar resource can beused to identify keywords. For example, utilizing a resource, such asWikipedia, as a large collection of words related to a category, aTF-IDF analysis of this resource would yield the most important keywordsfor a given category. Messages could be searched to locate messages thatused these keywords in which each of the resulting message-basedkeywords are stored in the associated category's table.

Category and Message Scoring

Once lists of keywords relevant to different topics have beenconstructed, the relevance of a specific message to a topic can bedetermined using a relevance score defined by

${{score}\left( {m,c} \right)} = {\sum\limits_{g \in m}^{\;}\; {f\left( {P\left( {g,c} \right)} \right)}}$

where m is a given message, c is a given category, g is a keyword in themessage, and P(g,c) is the normalized frequency of a message in categoryc containing the keyword g. The function ƒ is a thresholding orquantization function.

Quantization Function ƒ

Most category tables have probability distributions that follow apower-law distribution. However, the resulting tables may have a largenumber of small values, or conversely, a small number of large values.In such cases it may be helpful to pass this table through aquantization function. The simplest function is simply a threshold, bywhich any keywords that do not pass the threshold have frequencies setto 0. More complex quantizers are used to simplify the table, boostcertain values, or otherwise be shaped to improve the scoringperformance.

A final relevancy score can be defined asw_(score)·score(m,c_(q))+w_(match)·match(m,q), where w is a weight [0 .. . 1], score(m,c_(q)) is the score of the message in the query'scategory, and match(m,q) is the percentage of keywords that matchbetween message m and the query q. This value is used to ensure that themessages have some similarity, even if they both score high in eachcategory.

Referring now to an example, if the query is “Amazon river”, then thisquery would rank high in a category about rivers, the Amazon jungle, oreven geographical categories. This query however would score lower incategories about companies, as the term “river” would not occur veryfrequently in these categories. Similarly, the message “Hiked to theAmazon today—what a beautiful jungle this is” would also rank high inthe category of geographical messages, as the keywords “hiked” and“jungle” would appear often in such categories. Finally, the messagematches 50% of the terms in the query (i.e., “Amazon”), ensuring thatthe message has a relation to the query and not just the category as awhole.

Filtering Messages by Topic

In FIG. 4, a process for filtering messages by topic in accordance withan embodiment of the invention is illustrated. Initially, categories aredetermined (21). Keywords are identified and used to populate tables foreach determined category (22). In one embodiment, a medium is identifiedand used to select tables in which to populate with the keywordsidentified. When queries are performed using terms relevant to a webpage, the messages received in response to the search query can bescored for relevancy to the topic of the web page (23). In this way,relevancy of the messages is confirmed prior to the use of the messagesfor purposes including but not limited to scoring the relevancy of thequery term to the web page. Although a specific process is illustratedin FIG. 4, any of a variety of processes can be utilized to identifysocial network messages that are relevant to the topic of a specific webpage in accordance with embodiments of the invention.

Although the present invention has been described in certain specificaspects, many additional modifications and variations would be apparentto those skilled in the art. It is therefore to be understood that thepresent invention may be practiced otherwise than specificallydescribed, including various changes in the size, shape and materials,without departing from the scope and spirit of the present invention.Thus, embodiments of the present invention should be considered in allrespects as illustrative and not restrictive.

1. A method of identifying a list of terms relevant to a web page,comprising: generating a word list from at least a portion of thecontent of the web page using a web and message server system;generating an initial list of relevant terms based upon the word listusing the web and message server system; identifying additional relevantterms using messages posted to at least one social network based uponthe initial list of relevant terms; and creating an updated list ofrelevant terms by using the web and server system to combine terms inthe initial list of relevant terms with the additional relevant termsidentified using messages posted to at least one social network.
 2. Themethod of claim 1, wherein generating a word list from at least aportion of the content of the web page using a web and message serversystem comprises: extracting desired content from the web page; andgenerating a list of words utilized in the extracted web page content.3. The method of claim 2, wherein the desired content extracted from theweb page includes content from the group consisting of the title, URL,links, and body of the web page.
 4. The method of claim 2, whereinextracting desired content from the web page comprises performingdocument object model analysis on the web page.
 5. The method of claim2, wherein generating a list of words utilized in the extracted web pagecontent comprises: generating a list of words that appear in theextracted web page content; filtering the list of words to eliminatewords identified in a predetermined list of stop words; and filteringthe list of words to remove case and tense variants of words.
 6. Themethod of claim 1, wherein generating an initial list of relevant termsbased upon the word list using the web and message server systemcomprises: generating combinations of words that appear as neighboringwords in the extracted web page content; and combining the wordcombinations with the list of individual words to generate the initiallist of relevant terms.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein each of thegenerated combinations is limited to a predetermined number of words. 8.The method of claim 6, further comprising scoring each term in theinitial list of terms with respect to at least the extracted contentfrom the web page.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein scoring each of theterms with respect to at least the extracted content from the web pagecomprises: scoring each term based upon at least one characteristicincluding a characteristic from the group consisting of: the number ofoccurrences of the term in the extracted web page content; the number ofoccurrences of the term in the original web page; the uniqueness of theterm; the position of the term on the web page; and combinationsthereof.
 10. The method of claim 9, wherein uniqueness of a term isdetermined based upon the message rate of the term within at least onemessage stream.
 11. The method of claim 10, wherein: the uniqueness of aterm increases below a predetermined threshold; and the uniqueness of aterm decreases above the predetermined threshold.
 12. The method ofclaim 1, wherein identifying additional relevant terms using messagesposted to at least one social network based upon the initial list ofrelevant terms comprises: determining the uniqueness of all combinationsof a predetermined selection of the highest scoring terms from theinitial list of relevant terms; and selecting combinations of the termsbased upon the uniqueness of the combination.
 13. The method of claim12, wherein uniqueness of a combination of terms is determined basedupon the message rate of the combination of terms within at least onemessage stream.
 14. The method of claim 13, wherein: the uniqueness ofthe combination of terms increases below a predetermined threshold; andthe uniqueness of the combination of terms decreases above thepredetermined threshold.
 15. The method of claim 12, wherein thepredetermined selection of the highest scoring terms from the initiallist of relevant terms is a predetermined number of the terms from theinitial list with the highest scores.
 16. The method of claim 12,wherein the predetermined selection of the highest scoring terms fromthe initial list of relevant terms includes all terms from the initiallist with scores exceeding a predetermined threshold.
 17. The method ofclaim 12, wherein creating an updated list of relevant terms by usingthe web and server system to combine terms in the initial list ofrelevant terms with the additional relevant terms identified usingmessages posted to at least one social network comprises: scoring eachcombination of terms with respect to at least the extracted content fromthe web page; and adding the combinations of terms to the initial listof terms.
 18. The method of claim 17, further comprising: sorting thecombinations of terms and the terms in the initial list of terms basedupon score; and selecting an updated list based upon a predeterminedselection of the highest scoring terms from the sorted list.
 19. Themethod of claim 17, wherein scoring each combination of terms withrespect to at least the extracted content from the web page comprises:scoring each combination of terms based upon at least one characteristicincluding a characteristic from the group consisting of: the number ofoccurrences of the term in the extracted web page content; the number ofoccurrences of the term in the original web page; the uniqueness of theterm; the position of the term on the web page; and combinationsthereof.
 20. The method of claim 1, wherein identifying additionalrelevant terms using messages posted to at least one social networkbased upon the initial list of relevant terms comprises: retrievingmessages by querying at least one social network using terms from theinitial list of terms; and generating an additional list of relevantterms based upon the retrieved messages.
 21. The method of claim 20,wherein generating an additional list of relevant terms based upon theretrieved messages comprises: generating a list of words that appear inthe retrieved messages; filtering the list of words to eliminate wordsidentified in a predetermined list of stop words; filtering the list ofwords to remove case and tense variants of words; generatingcombinations of words that appear as neighboring words in the retrievedmessages; and combining the word combinations with the filtered list ofindividual words to generate the additional list of relevant terms. 22.The method of claim 20, wherein creating an updated list of relevantterms by using the web and server system to combine terms in the initiallist of relevant terms with the additional relevant terms identifiedusing messages posted to at least one social network comprises: scoringthe terms in the additional list of relevant terms based upon messagesretrieved from a social network; adding the scored terms to the initiallist of relevant terms.
 23. The method of claim 22, wherein retrievingmessages by querying at least one social network using terms from theinitial list of terms further comprises: determining the topic of theweb page; and scoring the terms in the additional list of relevant termsusing a set of messages having relevancy to the topic of the webpage.24. The method of claim 23, wherein scoring the terms in the additionallist of relevant terms using messages having relevancy to the topic ofthe webpage comprises: scoring each term in the additional list ofrelevant terms based upon at least one characteristic including acharacteristic from the group consisting of: the number of occurrencesof the term in the set of messages having relevancy to the topic of theweb page; the uniqueness of the term; the position of the term in eachmessage; and combinations thereof.
 25. The method of claim 23, whereinadding the scored terms to the initial list of relevant terms furthercomprises adding a predetermined selection of the highest scoring termsfrom the additional list of relevant terms.